


temper temper

by 2x2verse (agent_florida)



Series: twitchstuck [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fingerfucking, Kissing, M/M, Orders, Pesterlog, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Shyness, Slow Build, Video & Computer Games, twitch.tv
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-02-26 12:33:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2652218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent_florida/pseuds/2x2verse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>\ˈtem-pər\ <em>transitive verb</em><br/>1. to dilute or qualify by the addition or influence of something else; moderate<br/>2. to make stronger and more resilient through hardship; toughen</p><p>\ˈtem-pər\ <em>noun</em><br/>1. heat of mind or emotion, proneness to anger; passion<br/>2. calmness of mind; composure</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

\-- carcinoGeneticist  [CG] started trolling centaursTesticle  [CT] at 5:50 --   
CG: HEY.   
CG: HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN AWAKE?   
CT: D--> Si% hours   
CT: D--> You are not disrupting my sleep schedule   
CT: D--> And you   
CG: FUCKING FOREVER, I THINK I MIGHT OFFICIALLY BE NOCTURNAL AGAIN   
CG: HOW'D IT GO WITH ARADIA?   
CT: D--> I am still unsure as to which game I w001d like to run today   
CG: THAT BAD, HUH?   
CG: DO YOU HAVE A PLANNED STREAM TO DO OR SOMETHING?   
CT: D--> You know my streaming schedule by now   
CG: TAKE A GODDAMN DAY OFF, FOR FUCK'S SAKE.   
CG: IF YOU'RE THIS BENT OUT OF SHAPE I DON'T THINK YOU'LL BE GIVING YOUR SUBSCRIBERS A GOOD RUN ANYWAY.   
CT: D--> Siglemic's splits are too STRONG as it is   
CT: D--> What were you e%pecting to run today   
CG: VRISKA CONVINCED ME TO TAKE A STAB AT THE BINDING OF ISAAC.   
CG: I TOLD HER IT WAS A MEMEGAME FOR PISSGRUBS WHO SHIT HARD IN THEIR ASSWRAPS AND DOWNLOADED IT TWO HOURS AGO.   
CT: D--> When were you planning to go live   
CG: I DON'T KNOW   
CG: I'M NOT ACTUALLY IN THE MOOD TO HAVE AN ANEURYSM RIGHT NOW.   
CT: D--> What's wrong   
CG: WHY DOES SOMETHING ALWAYS HAVE TO BE WRONG?   
CT: D--> Is it the Jade human   
CG: WHY DOES IT ALWAYS HAVE TO BE JADE WITH YOU?   
CT: D--> Did you do something f001ish   
CG: EXCEEDINGLY.   
CG: THIS ISN'T ABOUT MY MANPAIN, THOUGH, THIS IS ABOUT   
CG: WELL   
CG: OKAY MAYBE IT'S A LITTLE ABOUT MY MANPAIN.   
CG: AMONG ALL THE OTHER THINGS THAT ARE HORRIFICALLY WRONG WITH MY LIFE, THE GIRL I HAVE A FLUSHCRUSH ON IS DATING SOMEBODY ELSE   
CG: LIVING WITH SOMEBODY ELSE   
CG: AND HE KISSES HER ON THE CHEEK DURING STREAMS AND EVERYTHING   
CG: TO BE FAIR, HE'S WAY BETTER FOR HER THAN I AM   
CG: HE'S ACTUALLY NICE AND SHIT, WHICH SHE DESERVES.   
CG: WHAT DID ARADIA DO TO YOU?   
CT: D--> I broke one of Miss Megido's %Bo% controllers   
CT: D--> When I started sweating profusely she used the corner of her shirt to wipe my brow   
CG: AND?   
CT: D--> She laughed at me   
CT: D--> Specifically she told me she liked me very much   
CG: I THOUGHT THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A GOOD THING?   
CT: D--> But not in a flushed manner   
CG: OH.   
CT: D--> As the fa% currently stand it is the Jake human who has caught her attention   
CT: D--> To which I say fiddlesti%   
CT: D--> E%cuse my language   
CG: YEAH, THAT'S SOME TOP-TIER BULLSHIT.   
CG: HEY.   
CG: IF YOU'RE NOT DOING A RUN TODAY, AND IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU'RE NOT...   
CG: UH.   
CT: D--> What did you have in mind   
CG: MAYBE YOU COULD COME OVER AND WE COULD JUST CHILL AND PLAY MINECRAFT OR SOMETHING?   
CG: I KNOW YOU LIKE IT.   
CT: D--> I thought you STRONGLY disliked Minecraft   
CG: I DON'T HATE MINECRAFT, I JUST HATE JOHN.   
CG: ... OKAY, FINE, I HATE MINECRAFT.   
CG: BUT IF IT'S WHAT YOU WANT TO PLAY, I'LL PLAY WITH YOU.   
CT: D--> W001d this be on stream   
CG: NAH.   
CG: SUBSCRIBERS CAN WAIT.   
CT: D--> As it stood today I planned merely to practice   
CG: THAT'S A GRATUITOUS THING, THEY SHOULD BE GRATEFUL YOU STREAM AT ALL INSTEAD OF JUST UPLOADING FOOTAGE TO YOUTUBE.   
CT: D--> Isn't that rude   
CG: YOU'RE STILL CONTRIBUTING TO THE COMMUNITY.   
CG: LISTEN.   
CG: EQUIUS.   
CG: TAKE THE GODDAMN DAY OFF.   
CG: GRAB SOME BAGELS ON THE WAY OVER HERE.   
CG: COFFEE. MONSTER. ROCKSTAR. DONUTS. I DON'T GIVE A SHIT.   
CT: D--> I w001d like to make one request   
CG: ANYTHING.   
CT: D--> If I bring my GameCube will you consent to a few matches in SSBM   
CG: NO ITEMS, FOX ONLY, FINAL DESTINATION.   
CT: D--> You have the e%ceptional ability to create game scenarios in which you are guaranteed to ragequit   
CG: RELAX, I WAS KIDDING.   
CG: JUST GET YOUR ASS OVER HERE.   
CT: D--> I will be there soon   
\-- centaursTesticle  [CT] stopped trolling carcinoGeneticist  [CG] at 6:43 --


	2. Chapter 2

Equius knocks, three times solid on your apartment door, to announce his presence. He’s not presumptuous enough to think it’s unlocked. Hell, with a knock like that, you’re expecting him to open the door and start announcing ‘oyez, oyez, oyez.’ “Just a second!” you shout instead, and mash the A button like your life depends on it.

Doesn’t matter. The little orange square on the screen doesn’t jump when you need it to most and you die on a triple spike. Whatever. You drop your controller on the coffee table, let the little Super Meat Boy quadrilateral keep killing itself on the first obstacle of the level, and answer the goddamn door.

Somehow you forgot how tall Equius was. He’s got a good foot on you, at least, and that’s not counting the horns. A weird thing to notice, but he smells… fresh. Like he just showered. Good for him. You hope the medication he’s taking for his hyperhidrosis is working out. His wet hair is tied into a low knot at the nape of his neck; his shades are gone, his deep blue eyes unguarded. His chin juts out proud when he speaks to you. “Good morning,” he says, voice grave and gravelly and deep.

“Depends,” you snark back. “What’s in the duffel?” Because he’s got a navy-blue freebie piece of crap slung over one of his shoulders and you’re dying to know whether there’s coffee or Rockstar inside. You feel like you just got shoved into a manual meat grinder and blended into chopped sirloin, and your eyes probably look like you got punched in the face a time or three.

Instead of answering you directly, Equius extends his other hand. He’s holding a cardboard form with three cups in it—the white-and-green of quality Seattle exports. “I brought bean sludge.”

Nice of him to tone down his blue-blooded vernacular for you. Highblood slang is awful close to human words as it is and you don’t want to get too comfortable with this foreign culture. You love it too much as it is. “Which one’s mine?” You’re a little rude. So sue you. You’ve been up for 18 hours, you probably won’t sleep anytime soon, and you’re in a half-shitty mood.

“Whichever you would like,” he tells you.

You reach out for the tallest cup and start chugging it down your throat before you can really taste it. It’s gritty and dark and sort of burnt, but you wouldn’t expect anything different. It takes you eleven swallows to choke down the venti and you don’t regret a thing. Already caffeine buzzes on the tip of your tongue, your fingertips coming alive and the tiny hairs at the back of your neck starting to stand on end. That’s some good shit. “Come in,” you tell him belatedly, leaving the empty cup on the end of your kitchen island as you welcome him into your shithive.

It’s a vague mess. The trash can is full of empty fast food bags; the recycling isn’t much better, just a graveyard of energy drink cans and water bottles. On your walls you have crooked posters, the fold marks still in them, that you tore out of Prima guides when you were still a little kid and didn’t know what speedrunning was yet. Your TV is still making obnoxious noises whenever the level starts over. The wire of your controller is obscenely tangled and you nearly trip over it as you retreat into the living room. “I brought you another,” he says, although he doesn’t come more than two feet into your apartment.

“Come. In.” He immediately shuts the door with his heel and promptly follows your lead. Interesting. “Sit,” you tell him, shrugging at an open spot on the couch not overwhelmed by half-eaten Cheez-it bags and blankets, and he doesn’t even seem to think about it, just does it. “What’s in the bag?”

“My GameCube and other accoutrements.” As he speaks, he starts pulling out the brick, the plug, the A/V cables. Shit, does your TV have the right inputs? If anyone can figure it out, it’s Zahhak. “Permission to plug in?”

“Granted,” you say, and he visibly relaxes, a little of the stuck-up tension leaving his shoulders. For a long time you thought this guy had a stick up his ass even bigger than the one up Kankri’s, but honestly… he’s not that bad. Kinda tolerable, all things considered. Sort of a weirdo, but so is everyone you know. And at least he’s respectful of your time, space, things, and presence. You really appreciate not having to fight for his recognition. “What about this other one, can I have that, too?”

“You just had a quad espresso,” he informs you, and for just a second you catch his thick blue lips quirking up like he’s fucking _smirking_ about it. His tongue curls strangely around the _sp_ sound, almost drawing his typing quirk into real life, and before you can catch your brain it starts thinking about how else his tongue curls around, the things you can make him pronounce.

You haven’t slept in too long and you haven’t been laid in even longer, if you’re thinking these kinds of delirious thoughts about Equius goddamn Zahhak.

He doesn’t follow up that comment with another. If nothing else, you like that about this guy. Man of few words. Doesn’t need to talk to get his point across. Strong silent type. Works out, because you’re the short, obnoxious firecracker who can’t seem to shut up for the life of him. Cool blue, heated red. He drags your television forward and starts examining the ports, red-yellow-white capped wires in his hands. For being as obscenely strong as he is, he’s delicate when it matters, and you have no fear he’s about to destroy your 1080p 51-inch pride and joy. “Please tell me you brought something to eat,” you whine at him, stomach growling as you reach for another cup of java.

He turns to look at you, his eyes a fiery blue. Arrows piercing through you, striking through your thoracic cavity and pinning through your food blender. You are struck, and suddenly. “My apologies,” he says, low and sincere, and you’re not sure if you want to keep the arrows fucking your insides or yank them out. If you want to push them through, the feathers tickling your internal organs, or pull them away, tearing at the notched backsides of the heads. You’re wounded invisibly. “Should I abscond for more nourishment?”

“I’m sure I have some stale Little Debbie snack cakes around here,” you mutter to yourself. Your hive is a mess. You’re not sure where half your food is because you never manage to put it away. How are you allowed to live on your own and care for yourself. Thank God for Sollux Captor, the best moirail in the known universe, for keeping you half-accountable. “D’you want any?”

“You are having dessert for breakfast?” The question-mark at the end of the sentence is barely there and the tone is mostly neutral, but you can hear the judgment lingering behind.

“I am an adult and I can eat whatever the fuck I want whenever the fuck I want,” you remind him none-too-gently. You stomp to the kitchen, grab your stepstool with your toes (one sneaks out of the worn end of your sock), and stand on it to start rummaging through your cabinets. Where—here. You don’t remember when you opened these powdered donuts, but the date says they’re still good. You unceremoniously shove one into your mouth. “Want schome?”

Equius looks to your mouth. Your hands. Your mouth again. You start licking your fingers and now he’s staring at both your hands and your mouth. “I,” he starts to say, but the gravel in his voice chokes down the vowel. He clears his throat and tries again. “Your extension of such an offer is appreciated, but I have already eaten this evening.”

You’re about to correct him—it’s morning here on Earth, the stupidity of your Alternian suns gone—but you decide it’s probably better if you don’t spray crumbs everyfuckingwhere. Instead, you swallow and wash down your stale pastry with more terrible coffee. “Sure?”

“Yes,” but this time he’s not looking at you. Instead, he’s carefully unraveling the cords from the ends of his GameCube controllers. One is the standard blue, but one is white—wait a second. “This one is yours. The last time we played together, you left it at my hive,” he explains. Blue gathers at the sharps of his cheekbones, as if he’s ashamed of keeping anything that’s yours.

“’S fine,” you tell him around another mouthful, “you gave it back eventually.” When you hop down from the stepstool, you bring your bag of donuts with you and plop it down on the coffee table next to the cardboard coffee cradle. Equius hands you your controller. It is bone-dry and you feel stupid for being proud of him. “Start it up, you’re Player One.”

“Your controller is wired into the first slot.”

Why must everything he say sound so pornographic to you today. You’re disgusting. Probably why Jade shut you down. “Fine, I’ll take charge.”

Equius sighs next to you. Like he’s relieved. Maybe he is. Maybe he’s tired of acting as strong as he looks. You’re certainly tired of acting angrier than you feel. “Is Doctor Mario alright with you?”

“You always play as Doctor Mario,” you gripe at him good-naturedly. To make sure he gets the affection behind it, you bump him with your elbow against his bicep. Whoa what a bicep. How does this guy even fit in workouts when he streams fourteen hours a day. “Zelda. Okay. Start with that. And… stage, is Corneria gonna work?” Equius nods. His profile is made of angles that are easy to trace with your eyes. “Here we go,” you tell him.

For a while there’s nothing but background music and the click of controllers as the two of you begin wavedashing through the stage. Yeah, you’re SSBM tourney trash, both of you, but at least you’re not the kind of no-fun faggots that tend to hang out on the GameFaqs forums. Grapple. Smash down-B. Edge grab. Flip past, bubble shield. You transform Zelda into Sheik and suddenly ascend four tiers into top-tier. The fucker is fast, can’t even be reached by the doc’s pills. You drill Equius’s character into the ground, then smash up-A and send him flying. 134%, one death, four remaining.

It’s comforting. The familiar sound of controllers being abused. The 3D rendering of characters you’re used to. An old friend with you on the couch, making your apartment seem less lonely. No need to speak, just trying to concentrate. He flings you off the edge of the stage and you catch a death on the left side of the screen—then immediately mistime a jump and go straight off the other edge. Nice. You roll your eyes at yourself and continue.

By the end both of you start nicking away at the other until you’re at 180% damage. 190%. 200%. 210%. It comes down to who can get a smash first, but you’re too fast, movements calculated, shield deployment precise—and then you slip, you can feel it, your claw just misses the R button and Equius sees it and takes advantage of it and grabs you and flings you and it’s game over, Zelda is clapping on the character-win screen while Doctor Mario takes a fucking bow. “Shit,” you whisper. Then, louder, “Good. Good game.”

“Thanks.” The percentage sign is unmistakable in his voice. “Another?”

“Fountain of dreams—hold on, let me switch, I wanna try Marth.”

“Marth is overpowered.”

“Excuse you, _Roy_ is the one who is overpowered, Marth is like Link with better attacks.”

“As I said, overpowered,” Equius gets in one final time before the _Survival!!_ voice kicks in on-screen.

Once again, controllers clicking like crazy. Something cracks—a seam in Equius’s controller. You know for a fact he’s broken GameCube controllers before, mostly because he’s abused the bumper buttons, and you know his grip can mess with the seams in the two plastic parts. Still, you don’t worry about it, adding to the claw gouges in your own controller while you manipulate your character further away from his.

You let him win. You’re refamiliarizing yourself with the game, you tell yourself, but in reality… you just suck. This is how you make your living—by being bad at video games. People give you thousands of dollars a month to watch you ragequit when the truth is, you’re just not good at what you do. You’re the only person you know who’s made a living off of sucking at literally everything you try.

At the end of the stage, you just put your controller down in disgust. Maybe two coffees of that strength in such a short time was a bad idea, because your hands are shaking. God, you’re a disgusting failure. To distract Equius from your own shortcomings, you crack your knuckles like it’s nothing to you and ask him casually, “So what about Aradia?”

Equius takes in a breath and holds it for a second; you can nearly see his vestigial legs trembling under his muscle shirt. When he sighs it out, the gust is nearly violent. “I don’t believe she is interested in anyone in her flushed quadrant at the moment.”

“What about the other guy?” you ask him. “Jack, or whatever his name is.”

“Mister English,” and Equius holds the word on his tongue like it makes him twist sour to say it, “is her primary rival for every category she plays. Their acrimony is sweet and polite, but still pitch in the utmost. And as he would be an oliveblood in our spectrum, I have no right to complain about her choice.”

Giving him too much credit, maybe, because he’s like Nepeta. Equius certainly sounds like he _wants_ to complain, or maybe he’s just tired of the whole situation. “D’you think,” and maybe you’re spinning completely out of your thinkpan right now, no filter between the bullshit of your gray matter and your squawkblister, “maybe she’s still stuck on Sollux?” Your tongue nearly gets caught between your fangs, imitating his lisp.

“They may be dating,” Equius admits. There’s something bitter stuck just under his tongue. Because Sollux isn’t just your moirail, he also shooshpaps Equius, too. Having his moirail wooing the girl he’s been flushed for since first molt can’t be easy—and he can’t even take sides. Sollux and Aradia have more history together than any of the rest of you do, and it’s only natural that they’d gravitate back together.

Something’s still troubling you, though. “I thought he already had Roxy as a matesprit.”

Equius looks at you side-on, and he even sounds amused when he speaks next. “Have you ever known Sollux to be satisfied with just one of anything?”

Huh. “Point,” you give him. He’s just beating you at everything today. “Two moirails, two matesprits.”

“Two kismeses,” Equius tells you.

“Seriously?” He nods, pulled-back hair slinging over one of his hulking shoulders. You feel small next to him, but not intimidated necessarily. It’s a strange dichotomy. “Okay, I know he’s bulge-deep in Vriska’s shitty shenanigans, but who else would even—“

Equius cuts you off. “Eridan,” and his voice sounds like a death knell.

You put your elbows on your knees and your face in your hands. “I wish I were surprised.”

“There are rumors, however,” and at this Equius sounds significantly more pleased, “that he will break off the relationship if the Dirk human begins to show interest.”

“Yeah,” you say, running your hands through your hair to make it stand up rough-on end before you jerk your head back up. “Better. You know him, right?”

“Vaguely,” Equius says, although he has to set down his controller before his hands clench too hard on it.

Just as you thought. Equius wouldn’t ever admit this, and you won’t force him to embarrass himself, but there was a rumor at one point that he and Dirk hooked up at the last SGDQ. You’re not sure how far that went, but they certainly spent an inordinate amount of time at the back of the room during Tavros’s Pokemon Yellow run discussing the finer points of robot mechanics and joint articulation. Roxy swore she saw Equius leaving Dirk’s hotel room at one point. If they did, you’re not sure how far it went. Knowing Equius, it wasn’t The Full Sex. Knowing Equius, he probably hasn’t even _had_ The Full Sex yet. Poor guy.

… And now you’re thinking about Equius having sex.

“Y’know, Aradia’s really missing out,” you tell him before he freaks himself out too much.

Equius sits there for a good ten seconds, just staring at the character select screen. “I don’t understand,” he says eventually, though the tips of his long ears prick up.

“I mean, look at you,” you keep blathering. “You’re up there with Trihex and Siglemic as one of the best Mario speedrunners of all time.”

“I don’t believe—“

“Time out,” you bite out, and you kick the blankets and clipped potato chip bags off the middle of the couch so you can get a knee up and face him directly. “You don’t get to interrupt me with your self-berating bullshit. I’m getting real with you and you’d better open up your auricular sponge clots and listen for a goddamn second.”

“But I—“

“Time. The fuck. Out.” If it’s possible, he sucks the words out of the air and right back down his throat. “You are talented. You are handsome. You bring in hundreds of dollars a day in ad, subscriber, and donor revenue. You hold three world records right now—and you still keep trying to improve.” Equius is staring at you unabashedly by now. “You specialize in a franchise that includes 19 games just in one branch. You can run all of them. In different categories. Side-scrollers and RPGs and 3D, all of it. Don’t tell me that’s not fucking astounding, because it is.”

Equius’s mouth is hanging open. You take that as a cue that this is working.

“You are good at what you do,” you tell him. “And I don’t want you talking down about yourself just because somebody can’t see you for _you_. Who doesn’t want to acknowledge that you’re an amazing speedrunner and a phenomenal troll. Who can’t handle all six-foot-six of your sweaty, awkward, magnificent ass.”

Equius swallows. Hard.  You watch the knot in his throat move. His eyes don’t leave your lips.

You’re seriously on a roll and you’re not about to stop. “I’m not letting you believe you’re worthless just because someone decided to lead you on for years, tease you about the one thing you’re most self-conscious about, and reject you just enough to keep you on tenterhooks a little while longer. That’s not even flirting. That’s torture. And you shouldn’t put yourself through that. You deserve better than that.” You truly believe this, too, which is why it’s coming out with such an honest fire behind it. “You deserve someone who’s going to look at you and say, yeah. He’s good-looking. He works hard. He’s fantastic at what he does. He’s talented and genuine and respectful and the definition of a gentletroll. If you believe you deserve any less than that, then I’m sorry to inform you that your thinkpan is permanently shriveled and no amount of pharmaceuticals can get it back for you. _You are a good person, Equius_. And you deserve better than the way Aradia has treated you.”

You stop talking. Your throat is scratchy. The television blares the selection screen music, but it sounds off-key and tinny now that it’s not the background for your fantastic ragequit of Equius’s entire life. Equius reaches out for the TV remote and mutes it, but his eyes never leave your face. After perhaps fifteen whole seconds of silence, he clears his throat. “Permission to speak?”

Oh. Right. You told him to shut up. “Granted.” It’s a word you like saying around him.

He still doesn’t seem to know what to say. He looks like he just got punched in the gut instead of given a good dressing-down. Maybe you went for him too hard? Maybe yelling at him wasn’t the way to get his self-doubts to go fuck themselves. Then Equius looks down and away to where his hands are curling in his lap. “I had no idea you thought so highly of me.”

“Who wouldn’t?” You’re serious. Maybe the hulk sitting next to you is incredibly socially awkward, but at his core, he’s not a bad guy. He’s just gotten some rotten luck. And he works too hard to get pushed around like this.

Equius stares at his hands for a few more seconds. Then he stares back up at you, right in your freak mutant eyes. One of them actually filled in hemononymous, but the other—the other is a blasphemous crimson, and you’re acutely aware of your deficiencies when he pins you like this. If you knew his eyes were this wide behind his shades, you would have asked him to bring them—they look too open like this, young and almost afraid of what he’s feeling. With his mouth hanging open and his lip trembling like that, he looks like you just converted him to a new religion. “Mister Vantas,” he breathes.

“What.” You took it too far. He’s going to tell you that you took it too far, how dare you, someone as low on the hemospectrum has no right lecturing a proud blueblood in such a manner, blah blah blah blah blah.

“As my leader—as my _friend_ ,” he corrects himself, but your pusher twinges at that first designation, “I am obliged to accept your conclusions as true, although I do not believe them myself.”

“You’d better, you big blue disaster,” you grumble.

“And I would very much like to kiss you,” he adds, very fast, unlike his usual precise diction, and your brain softlocks.

Hard reset. You squeeze your eyes shut so intently the seam between your eyelids burns. Shake your head a little—yes, thinkpan still there, not quite scrambled by this revelation but close. Slow getting back into it, mashing the start button, but no response from your mouth yet. When’s the last time you saved your progress in this relationship? How much progress have you lost? Is this save file ruined? Do you have to start over?

“If you would allow me to,” Equius adds quietly. His fingers are tangled together so hard his knuckles are white. His eyes are searching your face for an answer.

After the disaster that was hitting on Jade, you didn’t think anyone would want to kiss you ever again. You’re… kind of disgusting Twitch trash, after all. Your channel is literally a joke and you don’t make enough to pay for the health insurance you need to cover your inevitable coronary. “I,” drawls out of your mouth. For usually being full of epithets and curse words, you have no idea what to say to this display of earnestness.

“Please,” Equius says.

“Okay.” His brows draw together—confused. “Okay,” you tell him again. “You can—I. Yeah. Just.”

A line furrows between his eyes. He looks deadly serious. “Are you acquiescing?”

“Am I—“ You actually have to think for a second. Equius uses certain words because words mean things. Acquiescing means acceptance but has an overtone of resignation. Consent would be a more positive way of saying it. But you can also hear the second half of the sentence he left unsaid: ‘or do you desire this as much as I do?’ He’d never ask, because he’d never admit to having such base desires. “I’m not acquiescing—just get over here, you big lug. Come here.”

He scoots closer to you on the couch. His thigh is touching your knee. When he leans into your space, your first instinct is to cower away, because this guy is fucking huge. But he introduces himself into your personal bubble slowly. Respectfully. He doesn’t mean to frighten you. You can smell his shampoo clinging to the wetness lingering at the part of his hair. There are flutterbugs crawling in your insides.

When he brings his hand up to cradle the side of your face, you feel dwarfed. And also swamped, jesus, there goes the sweat fountain. Do you really make him that nervous?

He tilts your head up and cautiously brushes his lips against yours, chaste press against the slight upwards curve, and the flutterbugs explode into fireworks.

You are completely stunned. How long have you known this guy? Sweeps, right? And yet you never thought he was capable of this. Your mouth goes slack and he just kisses you gentler, lips sweeping across yours, first feather-light and then daring a little more pressure.

And then he tilts his head to the side just so, brushing your nose with his. His mouth seals over yours. And the fireworks detonate, the TNT explosions set to the tune of the goddamn Alternian anthem.

His mouth is damp. It clings to yours even though he tries to draw away, catch his breath. And when he dives in again, some of his reserve is gone. You can feel the raw strength behind his gentleness, subject only to his remarkable self-awareness, self-control. His mouth opens yours, so subtle you don’t even notice until you try to gasp, and he licks soft into the wet, wanting center. Licks again, draws you out to slide your tongue against his.

Your everything is quivering.

He draws back but never parts from you entirely, the heat of his breath sweet against your lips. You cannot get enough of the sudden show of _utter competence_ Equius is giving you. So you crawl closer. Pressed thigh-to-thigh with him, and even that’s not enough, so you vault across the close press of his legs like you’re mounting him (oh god the thought of riding him makes something heavy start to settle in your gut) and draw him closer. Wrap your hand around his hair, wind it around your fist, and you don’t pull, you don’t even tug, you just encourage, barely changing his angle so with your new height advantage you can at least attempt to kiss him back like he deserves.

His mouth is slick and new and blooms hot against yours when you cradle his face in your free hand. The taste lingering behind his teeth is coffee grits and metal, like he has a caegar tucked under his tongue. It’s something you can’t even begin to describe, so of course you need more of that. His mouth sucks at yours and you can feel your lips getting swollen. Your nook is getting wet, you can feel it against the seam of your pants, and all you want to do is close your thighs and keep the damp spot from spreading and keep your bulge from even _thinking_ about making an appearance but Equius is so broad, your knees on either side of his hips, that you can’t do it without drawing away.

The other way to hide it is to press closer. Until your hips nestle against his and you’re pressed chest-to-chest. His body is delightfully cool against yours, and plunging your tongue into his mouth feels like quenching hot steel in cold water. Just what you need to temper you and keep yourself from becoming brittle and useless. This close, you can feel the purr that’s lingering under his vestigial legs, a rumble stuck in his thoracic cavity that caresses your fucking skeleton, that’s how deep it is.

You shuffle forward and the seam of your jeans bumps against the fly of his long shorts and that certainly is a bulge in those shorts nudging up against the sopping squish of your nook.

You close your eyes and breathe. Draw back, smattering idle smears of your lips against the parts of Equius’s mouth that fall open slack and unbelieving, and try to listen with your skin and your muscles and your blood. That’s… fucking huge. There is at least one curl to it that you can feel where it doubles back on itself, a solid mass under you. You can’t believe it’s out already, but then again, you can’t believe you’re wet already—from just this, this much, this little.

Equius surges forward to claim your mouth like he’s getting away with something and you’re taken aback at his boldness. The both of you cradle each other’s mandibles, unwilling to part even for a breath. With the pad of your thumb under his jaw like this, your thumbprint is against his pulse; you can feel it race harder, stronger, with each insistent kiss. Hard and hot and heady. You feel drunk.

You move the fist that’s in his hair, pull the nape of his neck away from you enough so you can disconnect the raw magnetism between the two of you for a few seconds. Your brain barely comes back online, but at least it’s still there, beneath the bone-deep throb of the base of your horns. “Holy fucking shit,” you breathe against his mouth.

“Language,” he chastises you gently.

You ignore it. You always will around him. “Where in the unholy outer ring did you learn to do that?”

Equius looks away. Blue stands out against his cheekbones. “Miss Leijon insisted on teaching me so I might temper my strength.”

“Sweet mother grub and all she holds dear, I am going to _kiss her on the fucking mouth_ the next time I see her.” She deserves a congressional medal of honor for her selfless service to the trolls of your dead planet.

Equius goes to kiss you again. The broad sweep of his lower lip brushes the corner of your mouth and you suck in air so fast it makes you hiccup. His tongue sweeps across the part in your lips and you feel worshiped.

This is bad news. This is terrible, horrible, no good, very bad news. Your pusher feels twisted and absurdly warm. Everything between your legs might as well be on fire, that’s how badly you burn for him right now. “Stop,” and even though he has to hold himself back he does, gnawing on his lower lip while he waits for you to speak. “I just.” Your voice is so breathy. Sign of weakness. Dear god what has he done to you. “Let’s get one thing straight. I don’t fuck on the first date.”

Equius blinks. It takes him a few seconds to formulate a response. “You mean to say, as in… sex.” Yes, you adore the way his tongue curls around the unpronounced percentage sign. You want it curling like that in your mouth. (Around your bulge. Across your nook. Troll Jesus Christ.) That he even said that s-word is a sign of how much he’s grown since the two of you were six sweeps old and playing a shitty game that destroyed your planet. Because he refuses to say anything else in that vein, it sounds even more lewd and lascivious coming out of his mouth now.

You butt your forehead against his. “I mean to say.”

“I was unaware this was a date to you.” His tone is matter-of-fact, but his pulse against your prongtip lets you know he’s still very emotionally invested in what you have to say.

You huff out a laugh. “Me neither until you kissed me like that. Goddamn, Equius, warn me first when you’re going to be astoundingly proficient at something, would you?”

“But,” Equius continues to protest. “This was a date.”

He brought coffee and food and a good video game and you were hanging out together and the only thing missing was the coffee klatch and the horrific jangly douchebag folk music. “Yeah, I guess.”

“And,” he hesitates again, “you would like to copulate.”

“Do I really have to say it again?” You’re embarrassed enough you said it the first time. You are confident your body is trying to outdo deep sea crustaceans in its rubicund hue.

Equius brings his hand up to your hair. The touch of his cool fingertips is soothing, and when he finds the base of your horns your entire torso column thrums for him. “And you would do so now were it not for your _strong_ moral compunctions.” You can hear the emphasis, the quirk. “Which I _strongly_ admire,” he adds, and clutches you like he’s afraid you’ll evaporate.

“Uh.” You weren’t sure it was possible to die of embarrassment, but it looks like you’re trying to find out right the fuck now. “Yes?” and you want the core of the planet to swallow you whole.

Instead, Equius kisses you again, and your pumpbiscuit melts and settles into the sweet clench of your gut and pours out through the wetness at your nook. “Then may I take this opportunity,” he asks you gravely, “to kindly ask you if you would like to join me on stream later today?”

You headbutt him. Not gently, either, the bonehead. “You’re still streaming today?”

“I have a schedule,” he reminds you sternly, “and I do not set it aside lightly.”

“Funny, because if you leave right now I might actually be in the mood for a ragequit,” you snap.

He leaves. Two hours later, he asks you to perform a Super Mario 64 120-star run, one you’ve watched him do dozens of times. You take his invitation, import his splits into W-split, and fail miserably. He commentates for the viewers everything you’re doing wrong while you curse fluently in twelve languages and smile the whole time.


	3. Chapter 3

\-- carcinoGeneticist  [CG] started trolling twinArmageddons  [TA] at 21:22 --  
CG: HEY.  
\-- twinArmageddons  [TA] is currently unavailable! --  
CG: DAMN YOU TO THE FURTHEST RING OF HORRORTERROR HENTAI BULLSHIT.

Fine. If Sollux isn’t going to be on Pesterchum right now, it’s time to flood his chat with FrankerZs and Kappas. His Twitch stream is the first one on your Bookmarks bar, and although your Internet connection has a piece of shit time loading it for about thirty seconds, eventually it comes up.

When you type /mods, your name comes up. Good. Excellent. You can spam to your heart’s content without getting timed-out and without the chat going into slow, subscribers-only mode. FrankerZ FrankerZ FrankerZ FrankerZ FrankerZ FrankerZ FrankerZ FrankerZ FrankerZ FrankerZ FrankerZ FrankerZ FrankerZ FrankerZ FrankerZ FrankerZ FrankerZ FrankerZ FrankerZ FrankerZ FrankerZ Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa Kappa—

TA: a22hole, fuck off, ii'm iin the miiddle of an objectiive.  
CG: NICE TO KNOW YOU CAN'T STOP PLAYING A STUPID IDIOT TAKING IT TOO SERIOUSLY FUN IS BANNED GAME TO PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR GODFORSAKEN MOIRAIL FOR MORE THAN TWO SECONDS AT A TIME.  
CG: DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT GOING BACK TO IT, I WILL HACK YOUR FUCKING CHANNEL SO HARD IT'LL BE CRYING FOR ITS LUSUS.  
TA: plea2e, you couldn't hack your way out of a wet paper 2ack.  
CG: TRY ME.

“Ay eff kay,” Sollux mumbles into his on-screen mic, and he puts his loading screen on his channel instead of his gameplay. Well, at least you got his attention.

TA: 2o what'2 got you all worked up thii2 tiime?  
TA: that'2 a joke, you're alway2 worked up at all tiime2 and ii don't 2ee what your fuckiing problem ii2 riight now.  
TA: although beefore ii go back two DOTA, ii have two 2ay, ii'm glad you and EQ are gettiing along.  
CG: WHAT?  
TA: ii 2aw hiim on your 2tream earliier, telliing you how much you 2uck.  
TA: beecause, iinciidentally, you do.  
CG: PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF YOUR CAREFULLY CULTIVATED APIARY DO NOT GO BACK TO YOUR GAME.  
TA: what ii2 your fuckiing ii22ue riight now?  
CG: I'M KIND OF FREAKING OUT I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED BUT I THINK I'M FALLING PITCH OVER PALE FOR HIM AND I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO????????  
TA: that 2ure ii2 a whole bunch of word2.  
TA: giive me 2ome context. 2tat.  
CG: I KNOW HE'S YOUR MOIRAIL TOO AND EVERYTHING BUT THIS WENT A LOT FARTHER THAN I THOUGHT IT WOULD AND HE SPRUNG SOME SURPRISING ADEQUACY ON ME TODAY THAT I WASN'T EXPECTING AT ALL???  
TA: all riight, 2low down, 2top vomiitiing cap2lock in the text box and tell me what happened.  
CG: OKAY  
CG: ALL RIGHT  
CG: HERE'S THE THING  
CG: THE THING IS  
CG: EQUIUS  
TA: ... ii2 there a 2nd half two thii2 2entence or do ii have two play fiill iin the key2ma2h?  
CG: YOU'RE A DICK.  
TA: yeah, ii get that a lot, and ii'm not about two change.  
TA: 2o, EQ.  
CG: YOU KNOW WHAT, WHY DON'T I JUST COME OVER THERE AND ACTUALLY TALK TO YOU IN PERSON.  
CG: IT'S SO MUCH EASIER TO JUST RANT THAN IT IS TO TYPE ALL THIS OUT.  
TA: can you not, ii have an iin2tance that need2 taken care of yesterniight.  
CG: SIT AND SPIN, YOU KNOW FULL WELL YOU CAN SET YOUR CHARACTER'S AUTORUN PROGRAM AND NO ONE WILL KNOW YOU'RE AFK.  
TA: ii haven't 2howered iin 2 day2.  
CG: THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING, BESIDES THE FACT THAT YOU'RE NECKBEARD SCUM.  
TA: iif you were looking for neckbeard 2cum ii thiink you mii22pelled ED's handle.  
CG: THE OTHER REASON I HAVE TO COME OVER IS BECAUSE YOU CAN'T SEE THE MAGNIFICENT DOUBLE BIRD I'M FLIPPING YOU ON MY END OF THIS CONVERSATION.  
TA: briing food.  
CG: I REFUSE.  
TA: fiine, then ii'm not 2teppiing away from my hu2ktop.  
CG: I'LL SIT ON YOUR LAP AND START HUGGING YOU AND PURRING.  
TA: how ii2 thii2 diifferent from any other tiime you 2eriiou2ly iinconveniience me for your own fuckiing amu2ement.  
CG: PLEASE.  
TA: let your2elf iin, key ii2 where iit alway2 ii2.  
CG: THANK FUCKING GOD.  
TA: my name ii2 2ollux, but ii appreciiate the compliiment.  
CG: NOW IS THE PART WHERE I RAGEQUIT THIS FUCKING CONVERSATION BECAUSE YOU'RE TOO MUCH OF A DOUCHE TO SET IT ASIDE FOR EVEN THIRTY GODDAMN SECONDS TO BE A GOOD 'RAIL.  
TA: <>  
CG: ...  
CG: <>  
\-- carcinoGeneticist  [CG] stopped trolling twinArmageddons  [TA] at 21:42 --

The only good thing about going over to Sollux’s so late is that you actually had a chance to sleep after the Super Mario 64 stream. Being connected to the Internet at all times has kind of fucked with your sleep schedule. Sometimes it works out—there’s some huge support in Thailand, Sweden and Norway, and you can’t get that with a MST schedule—but mostly it’s just a huge inconvenience.

Thankfully Sollux is just as wired in as you are. At this point you don’t even care that he’s going to be playing DOTA 2 the entire time you’re over at his place. You just need someone to hold you and grub you for a little bit and tell you everything’s going to be okay and take pale pity on your sorry ass.

You go to use the key on Sollux’s door and it’s not even locked. What a goddamn slob. Once you go in, you have the common courtesy to lock the door behind you, and you make a beeline straight for the buzzing sound you hear—his apiary going nuts over the hell his processor is giving it, probably. He’s too hard on the little bumblebugs.

Sollux is right where you thought he would be, doing exactly what you thought he’d be doing. He doesn’t even notice when you walk into his officeblock. That’s normal, for him, and you’re okay with that. You just need some actual moirail contact instead of doing it over the Internet, and that’s fine with Sollux, even if he pretends to get offended about how needy you are.

You roll his computer chair away from his desk, crawl into his lap, and put your arms around his shoulders, and Sollux digs his elbows into your sides when he gets his hands back on his keyboard, resting his chin between your nubby horns. It’s comfortable. The two of you have done this since you were barely more than wrigglers, three sweeps old and confused about the world, always more than just best friends.

“So,” Sollux says, whistling through his fangs a little. “Eee-cue.”

“Equius,” you correct him, though the usual spitfire is out of your voice. You kinda blew a throat node when you were ranting at your N64 earlier. Tea. Tea later. Sollux now.

“What about him?”

“Uh.” Where do you even start this story? “I started catching up with him about how his thing with Aradia went—“ with his pusher under your auricular sponge clots you can hear his pulse quicken—“and, well, it’s him and it’s her, so not well.” Yeah, given that sign, he’s probably got her in a matespritship, or getting close. He’s always been stuck on her.

Sollux hums noncommittally. His hands never stop moving on his computer keyboard, but you know he’s mentally here, now, and not in his game. “Why didn’t he just talk to me?”

“Think about what you just said,” you grouse at him.

He does. Then, “Oh.” Yeah. Awkward, and that’s even by non-Equius standards. Having a conversation with one’s moirail about one’s flushcrush when said moirail is already actively courting said flushcrush into his own red quadrant is a betrayal and a backstabbing waiting to happen, something almost on an ash-required-to-hash-this-out level.

“Yeah, and I had a rough day, too—“

“Was it Jade,” he interrupts you, like it’s not even a question.

“Fuck you.” That’s a yes and he knows it. “So I told him to come over, bring whatever, we’d hang out, play some SSBM, whatever. He needed a break from streaming and I didn’t feel like raising the pressure behind my ganderbulbs that—that late-early.” Weird-ass human-troll time equivalents now that they’re all here on Earth. “He brought me coffee and everything. I let him beat me a few times.” Trying to salvage your pride. “He still wasn’t really into it, though, so I called a time-out and gave him a pep talk.”

“A real one or a fake one?” Legitimate question.

“A real one. He’s not a bad guy, he just thinks he is, and I wanted to punch his self-deprecation right in its miserable sniffnode. And then—“

Sollux’s elbows dig into you a little harder. Trying to hold you closer, in that strange way of his. You tighten your arms around his shoulders and nuzzle into his shirt. “Then,” he prods you.

“He said—he said he wanted to kiss me, and it kind of happened, and I don’t—“ This is the part where things get confusing. “If I’d’ve known he would’ve been so good at it I don’t think—it’s.” Sollux’s chin is sharp at the top of your head. “Is this weird for you?”

“What?”

“That your moirails kissed.” Sollux’s life is already complicated enough, what with his insistence on dual quadrants, without you making it worse.

He shrugs. “Nah.”

“Okay, because—he. Like, holy shit, Sollux, my pusher was flopping around so hard it hurt and I couldn’t stand it and this is _freaking me the fuck out_ because, yeah, he’s a great guy, who wouldn’t want him, but _I never thought that would be me._ ”

Sollux takes his hands away from the keyboard. One goes to his mouse so he can squiggle it around, but the other—the other wraps around your waist and hugs you back properly. “Stop freaking out,” he insists. “Shoosh, asshole. Just—shoosh, okay, stop it.” It’s only then that you realize you’re breathing hard, your ignorance tunnel closing up on you and your fists grabbing at Sollux’s shirt a little too insistently. “You’re flipping your shit right now for no fucking reason. I wanted the two of you to get closer and hey, look, it fucking happened. Just like I knew it would.”

“Doom thing?” you ask him, voice small.

“Doom thing.” The mouse movement stops and then it’s both arms, two, the two of you locked in this sitting down hug-cuddle. “So what you never thought you’d see him like that? Ride that horse as far as it takes you.”

“You make it sound simple,” you grumble.

“That’s because it is,” and you can hear his smile alongside the unsaid, affectionate _you fucking idiot_. “Why can’t you ever just enjoy things?”

You sigh. Your fists unfurl a little. “Because my life doesn’t fucking work like that.”

“He obviously likes you enough to want to touch you,” Sollux points out. “He doesn’t think you’re a disgusting mutant or anything. Fuck, he probably still thinks of you as his leader. Do you know how much that means to him? A lot,” he says before you can interject. “The hemospectrum can go fuck itself. Job titles can go fuck themselves—he’s not an Executor and you’re not a Sufferer and none of this has to be the way it was.”

“That’s weird, because when he looked at me I definitely felt like I was getting shot in the gut,” you snark.

“Shut up,” Sollux tells you wearily. “My point is—fresh start. New game file. Take it wherever you want, whatever route you want to do or category you want to run. And if it doesn’t work out, don’t drop the game entirely. For my sake,” he insists, “he’s still going to be my moirail no matter what.”

“And me too?”

“And you too.” He plants a sloppy kiss in the unruly mop of your hair. “Get up, I’m hungry and I want Kraft macaroni and grubsauce.”

“I thought you had an _inth-tanthe_ ,” you mock him with his old lisp.

“Finished it,” he says dismissively, although you know he’s smirking about it. “Come on, I’ll make some for you and we can play Minecraft for a while.”

“I fucking hate Minecraft,” you gripe.

“I know.” He stands up, stretches, and you koala-cling to him. Usually he’d just topple over and let you fall, but tonight he surrounds you with psionics and lets you stay where you are.

Your pasta is a little chewy, the grubsauce still a strange mix of powder and wet, but it’s food, and your moirail made it, so it touches your pusher a little. You can’t even find it in you to complain about his choice of chill game. He leans into you, and you rest your head on his shoulder, and you dual-screen this bitch like you always have, and you build a home together.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> mmh the fingering

\-- carcinoGeneticist  [CG] started trolling centaursTesticle  [CT] at 14:42 --   
CG: HEY YOU.   
CT: D--> Hello   
CG: UM   
CG: SO   
CG: DO YOU MAYBE WANNA COME OVER AND WE CAN PLAY SOME MORE SSBM OR SOMETHING?   
CT: D--> When were you e%pecting this to take place   
CG: RIGHT NOW MAYBE?   
CG: IF YOU CAN, I KNOW YOU'RE OUTSIDE NORMAL STREAMING HOURS BUT I DON'T WANT TO INTERRUPT YOU IF YOU'RE WORKING ON SHIT.   
CT: D--> I am unsure whether I c001d be classified as working at the moment   
CT: D--> I am currently e%amining a tool assisted speedrun Wi%%ards posted to their YouTube account   
CG: OH, WIXXARDS?   
CG: THAT'S ROXY.   
CT: D--> I do not believe I have become acquainted with Miss Ro%y yet   
CT: D--> She certainly has a STRONG sense of flow and routing   
CG: YEAH, BUT SHE DOESN'T RUN LIVE, SO THERE'S THAT.   
CG: ALSO ONE OF OUR MOIRAIL'S MATESPRITS, I'M SURPRISED YOU HAVEN'T GOTTEN TO KNOW HER YET.   
CT: D--> Vantas that is e%ceptionally rude   
CG: I DIDN'T MEAN IT IN THE FUCKING SUFFERER'S GOSPEL SENSE AND YOU KNOW IT.   
CG: SO WHAT DO YOU SAY?   
CG: PUT IT IN YOUR TO WATCH LATER PLAYLIST AND COME OVER SO WE CAN MESS AROUND IN MARIO KART OR SOMETHING.   
CG: I WANT TO GET TO KNOW YOU BETTER.   
CT: D--> Did you mean that in the 100d sense of the phrase   
CG: JUST COME OVER, YOU HULKING MOUNTAIN OF COLD-BLOODED SWEAT.   
CG: ...   
CG: <3   
CT: D--> You are incorrigible   
CT: D--> <3   
\-- centaursTesticle  [CT] stopped trolling carcinoGeneticist  [CG] at 15:05 --

His stupid little emoticon shot you through the pusher with an arrow from his bow. Maybe it’s you who needs the goddamn towel.

It’s been a few weeks since the last time he came over. The two of you are just hella busy. Gotta keep the income stream flowing somehow, which means pulling 14-hour days streaming. Selections for the next AGDQ are ramping up, and both of you want to put together a good run so your games and categories will be accepted. You’ll probably be going solo through the entire AwfulGDQ category and ragequitting for about 24 hours straight before you collapse. Last year it brought in over $200,000 for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. He’ll be doing Super Mario 64 16-star, maybe 120-star if the donation incentive is met. Probably also some kind of Paper Mario run. He was in this last summer’s SGDQ, and honestly, since his games are so popular they’re rarely declined. There’s a lot of pressure on Equius to do well, but he always meets—exceeds—completely smashes expectations.

Equius’s knock on your door is solemn and familiar. With that kind of entrance, he’d make a good bailiff for Terezi once she gets the judgeship all of you know she’s gunning for. As it stands now, you holler at him, “It’s open!”

He doesn’t open the door. Fucking predictable. You switch your TV input to your N64 hookup, then get off your ass and let him in. Now you can see why he couldn’t open the door—he’s clutching some kind of weird Earth foliage in one of his hands, wilting from the pressure of his grip, and the other hand is carrying his navy-blue duffel that he takes with him everywhere. At first he doesn’t even say anything, just holds out the Earth flower things to you. His hair swings in front of his face.

“Uh,” comes out of your mouth, because when anything but anger flusters you you’re remarkably incoherent. “Thanks.” You reach out, take the silly bouquet out of his hand, and when your fingers brush your blood sings for him. They smell a little funky, but they’re probably still edible. Nice of him to bring you a snack. “Follow me,” you tell him, just in case he gets any ideas about just standing in the doorway like a stupid dumb idiot moron.

You plop down on the couch, pluck off a petal, and pop it into your mouth, licking your fingertips afterwards. Equius follows each movement of your fingers and your lips like he’s documenting a foreign species. It tastes salty and kind of tart, and it melts across your tongue. Where do you recognize that from? Then Equius leans down to kiss you, a chaste little peck, before he sits down, and yeah. That’s it. It should be kind of gross that you just ate something soaked with his sweat, but honestly, it could have tasted worse.

You wonder what his bulge tastes like and you blush by the time he lets up the pressure of his lips.

What’s in the duffel, this time, is an adapter and a GameCube controller. “I break far too many N64 controllers of my own,” he tells you, “and it would be unforgivable for me to break anything of yours.”

“They’re replaceable,” you point out.

“And you shouldn’t have to replace them,” he insists while he plugs in.

He’s too nice to you, and you’re worried about what will happen when his composure inevitably snaps. His patience for you seems endless and you don’t understand why.

He picks Mario for his racer. Given a choice, he’ll always pick Mario. For this round, you pick Bowser, and the course starts going. You suck at Mario Kart 64. You suck at a lot of games, but you never could get the hang of this one in particular. Maybe it’s not that you suck, but that you’re just a casual player and you’re up against someone who streams this shit for a living. As always, you take a particular, savage joy in the red shells. One time you even make second place. Next to you, Equius isn’t smiling, but his mouth isn’t pressed together quite so tight as it usually is.

“Good,” you tell him at the end of the circuit. “Good race.” You peel away another flower petal and set it in your mouth, just under your tongue. It melts there. Rich, suffusing you with flavor.

“Unbearably sloppy,” Equius says, but when he puts his controller down it doesn’t have a hint of glisten on it. Sweat mostly under control, then.

“You’re too hard on yourself.” You offer him a flower; he pulls off the entire bloom and starts munching on it like grubcorn. “It’s okay to play video games for fun, y’know.”

“I know I can run _stronger_ than that,” he insists. “Video games are a serious business, and one that I take exceptionally seriously.”

You snort out a laugh. A corner of Equius’s mouth turns up slightly—oh, oh fuck, you made him smile, and your pusher twinges. “You sound like Sollux when you say shit like that.”

“I have not yet sunk so low as to play DOTA.” A joke. A closed-lips smile, but it’s as bright as a toothy grin to you.

“This is so backwards,” you say idly. The music loops for what seems like the thousandth time in the background. “These games are supposed to be fun, but when you treat it like a job it’s not the same. So what are we supposed to do for fun?”

“You sound like you have a foolish idea.”

“Am I that transparent?” Your controller clatters on your coffee table, you put it down so fast, and before Equius can freak out too much you situate yourself in his lap, knees digging into the couch and spread across his thighs. “Come on,” you tell him quietly, putting your hands on his (broad, broad) shoulders and smoothing down his shirt. “I haven’t seen you in ages and I—I mean, if you want—“

His hand comes up to cup your face, and his thumb smears across your bottom lip. Your eyes close instinctively. Kissing would be okay, but face-touching almost seems _too_ intimate, even though Equius is pretty solidly your matesprit by now. Something in you ratchets tighter than you thought possible. “You are so red for me,” he rumbles.

“I’m not even sure how to tell you _duh_.” But then he flips his hand, runs his knuckles against the heat rising in your cheeks, and you shiver at the cold. You open your eyes and he stares up at you, wondrous. “Are you waiting for an engraved invitation?”

A tremor runs through his fingers. “Please allow me.”

“As if I wouldn’t,” you tell him, and seal the distance yourself.

It’s just as phenomenal as it is every time. You can feel his hesitant, shaky exhale against your nose. His mouth slips against yours, hitches onto your bottom lip—he catches it between his teeth and tugs and your blood lights on fire. He’s wearing his hair loose today, and it slips through your fingers like wet strands of silk when you thread your hands through it. Solid slick of his tongue against your lips, persuading you to open while he cradles your jaw, and you choke when he outlines the points of your fangs.

It takes too long for the two of you to part from this initial contact. Your lips already feel bruised; his are swollen blue. He lays a series of chaste little pecks along your mouth that somehow feel more perverted than if he was trying to tonguefuck you open. Swipes along your lips like he wants to eat out your mouth—god what if it was at your nook. Sucks your tongue into his mouth, closing his thick lips around the point of it—fuck what if it was around your bulge. You press forward so insistently your teeth clack, fingers lacing at the back of his head to keep him from even _thinking_ about retreating.

Long, drawn-out, languorous and exquisite; he kisses you like you’re worth taking his time and it makes you squirm. Especially when his hands, growing colder by the second, skim across your shoulders, down your arms, to circle your waist and then settle heavy on your thighs. The cold of it burns against the overheated flush of your skin, even through your clothes. The solid weight of him is almost too much, and when you shift this time you know you’re already far more invested in this than you ought to be.

His mouth moves against yours, slow deep sure, and the broad musculature of his body is perfectly blue-blooded cool. Your horns are throbbing. The purr in his chest is subsonic, the sound of shifting tectonics, and you feel like you’ve harnessed a force of nature. With each slow push-draw of his tongue he runs his palms up and down your thighs spread so wide across his lap, and oh. Oh fuck. His thenar space spreads at the same time your legs do, his thumbprints closer to the inside seam of your jeans.

You take in a shuddering breath, a little wet on the inhale, and your protein chute closes down in a moan when he deliberately frames your muscles in his grip and moves his hands upwards. God it feels amazing, he’s so _deliberate_ and _careful_ and _calculated_ with you, and it leaves you feeling… played. Input, output. But Equius never plays something without having studied it first. Never takes something on unless he thinks he can do it perfectly. That he thinks so highly of you makes your pusher throb in every place you’re sensitive—meat of your tongue, tips of your prongs, curl of your toes, spots under your horns, tip of your bulge, wet of your nook.

That’s how good it is. Your bulge is already making an appearance, and Equius has to be able to feel how much damp is at the crotch of your jeans by now. But his hands keep questing up—and up—and further up, until his thumbs are right at the crotch of your jeans, and you’re so embarrassed you think you might literally spontaneously combust. Not just that you’re this turned on already—god, how easy do you even want to _be_ —but also that you have no idea what Equius is going to do with you. He’ll probably remember that you’re disgusting lowblood trash, pull away and run for the door, sneer at you what a terrible troll you are—

Equius draws his hands back down. Slowly, like he’s not doing it on purpose. And you whine, because as teasing and humiliating as the contact was, it still felt really fucking good. “Oh,” Equius says when he pulls back, a concentration line between his brows.

“Sorry,” you say on instinct, because usually shit like this is entirely your fault.

He frowns down at you and you sort of want to die a little bit. Then, “Would you like a moment to collect yourself?”

“I—what?”

“You seem uncomfortable,” he says, too-wide blue eyes searching your face with obvious concern.

“Because my pants are too tight,” you tell him through a hollow laugh. He _still_ looks confused. “I’m _turned on_ , you assclown.”

“I see.” His hands move back up your thighs and your breath goes backwards. “Is it something I can fix?”

“Oh my god,” is the next thing that comes out of your mouth, because hey caressing and his mouth is still very close to your mouth and there is another person touching you like you’re worth touching and it’s just on this side of overwhelming. “If you would, yeah,” you try to say casually—try and utterly fail, because your voice has too much breath behind it.

When you roll your hips against his, those broad, strong hands on your thighs hold you down and keep you from moving too far. “Order me to do it,” Equius purrs against your mouth.

Holy shit, you might actually explode. With as accidentally filthy your word vomit can be, when he asks for it on command you just end up squeaking a little. “Get—get your—“ you start with, and it’s just not working. “Undo my pants,” you try again.

He deliberately drags his hands back up your legs before the finesse of his fingers starts working at your fly. You never thought him capable of such delicate work, but you’re probably not giving him enough credit—it’s not just slight tilts of a control stick, it’s the tiny screws and bolts of his robots, the fine articulations you can’t even begin to see. You sigh in barely-contained relief when he undoes the button, unzips your fly. “Like this?”

“Fff-fuck yes,” but when you bite your lip to keep the cuss from spilling out he tugs it out from between your teeth with his mouth, sucking just hard enough. The first third of your bulge is out already, gladly getting some breathing room, but your nook is still trapped in the rapidly-growing squelch it’s making of your pants. “Push them down—a little more.”

His claws prickle your skin before he manages to grab at your belt loops and pull your pants down around your ass. Okay, this isn’t quite going to work, you need your pants _off_ because the chafe at your sensitives is _fucking unbearable_. You have to stand and draw back—you immediately miss the cool of him, it’s too hot in this room and the ambient air doesn’t have enough pressure against your skin—but then you’re naked below the waist, a little drip of red making its way down the insides of your thighs. Fucking awful.

But Equius looks at you like he wants to eat you alive. He reaches out for your wrists, pulls you back down onto his lap, and okay. You could stand to have him rough you up a little more. This is only a fraction of his strength, just a taste, and you’re already hungry for more. The tip of your bulge wavers. “Come on, just fucking _touch me_ ,” you say into his mouth before you kiss him again.

“Yes, sir,” Equius says, nearly reverent, and frames just the tip in the pads of his fingers.

It’s not enough. It’s nowhere near enough. Cold against overheated flesh, pressure like you’ve never touched yourself—you shiver violently and Equius puts his other arm around you, drawing you close. And then, the evil bastard, he tugs at you. Not encouraging, but _demanding_ , the rest of your bulge to slip out. It’s too much, too sudden, and you keen when the rest of you springs out automatically. “Fuck,” you choke on. It aches. So good.

“Like this?” he says again, and pulls like he just did.

Maybe he thinks you’re still holding a few inches in reserve—oh. Oh fuck. He. This is how he has to take his bulge out, he wouldn’t know to do this unless he’d done it himself—and he wouldn’t be so practiced at it if it wasn’t him. And it just reinforces to you that his bulge has to be fucking gigantic, just like the rest of him. It makes your nook clench around nothing. “No, not—“ you tell him, prying his clasping fingers away from your oversensitive bulge.

Equius makes a dejected noise you never want to hear from him ever again. “Tell me what to do.” He’s lost, needs guidance.

You’re his leader. It comes naturally to you. You close your fingers around his wrist—thick, only go a little more than halfway around, and keep him from drawing his hand too far away. It’s a sign of just how desperate you are that you can say this out loud: “I need something in my nook, get your fucking fingers in me, god damn it!”

Equius kisses you molten-steel slow and hot, quenching some of your fire and turning it to trembles. His hand moves between your legs; you instinctively try to close them but they’re pinned open too far. The heel of his hand presses against the place you’re sopping wet and it squelches, the sound filthy and obscene and all too real. The tips of Equius’s ears go blue. Your entire everything has to be flushed red by now. The broad pressure feels amazing and you find yourself grinding against it before you can help it. “More?”

“Fuck yes,” you gasp out, and then he gives you less. “The fuck are you doing, you—oh, oh,” he traces through the ripples of the slickened outside of your nook, teasing you with the broadness of them, fuck you sideways in the aurals with a rusty lawn implement _that’s just his fingers_ , and your thighs tremble with the effort of holding back from just humping him senseless. “What part of _inside_ do you not fucking understand, you—you—“ even insults are failing you with the calculated precision of his touch.

One plunges into you and your everything seizes up.

Your nook clenches around him. Hard. When you look down, you’ve drooled all the way down his hand already. God, but the cool richness of it feels so good against your overheated parts, soothing you at the same time as it’s working you up. Just when you think you’ve taken the whole thing, there’s more. And more again. Long, and articulated, and hitting up perfectly against every single one of your hot spots.

Equius draws his hand back. His fingertip drags against you, slight prickle of his claw against your sensitive spots like a line of lightning sparking from the inside. And then another, two, double, alongside, and now within, and you clutch onto his shoulders with hands white-knuckled and arch your back pretty for him, like he’s stringing your spine into a strongbow and winding the tension in your skeleton ever-tighter. “Is this what you wanted, redblood?”

Not mutantblood. Curled around his tongue like being off the spectrum makes you something above even royalty. Your pumpbiscuit clutches around something tender in your thoracic cavity, turns into goo and pours out through your nook and around Equius’s fingers. Soothing, and he walks his fingers slow and sure in you, like he could pull you closer to him this way. It cords the muscles in his forearm. Is he sweating, or is that a pinkish gleam from your arousal all down his arm? God, the more he plays with his fingers in you the _less_ you want to spill, if only to keep it going for longer.

You are shameless. So long as he looks at you like you’re his lord, you could conquer anything. A sweet chirp fills the room, sneaking out from under your vestigial legs. Everything in you throbs, thick and heavy; your bulge smears idly against the hollow of your belly. When you look down you can—you can, holy fuck—you can see yourself spread around his hands, periwinkle-grey knuckle-deep in obscenely bright red ripples, and it just makes you clench harder. “Tell me I’m doing well,” he says, too quiet under the rush of your pulse.

“Oh, god, fuck, the best,” you might even be drooling and he doesn’t seem to give a fuck, just licking against your sodden mouth and taking the place where it’s open and wet and vulnerable. “Fuck, fuck, fuck me, fuck me, just like, just like that, oh god, oh my fucking god—“

“You are so lewd,” and the way he says it, deep in his chest, makes it sound like a compliment.

“Equius, _fuck_ , keep—yes, that,” his fingertips smear broad circles into the lining of your nook, drag and draw and massaging you deep, filling you with more than you dared to want from him. “I—“ breathless, vestigial legs vibrating, “I’m—you’re going to make me—“

“Order me,” he says, voice weak, and fucks his fingers into you so hard your neighbors can probably hear the squish-schlick of your nook around him.

You roll your hips and seize, everything in you going bright-hot, so close, almost—“Make me spill,” you say in the most imperious tone you can muster.

His fingers curl in you, drag out hard, oh god, it’s going to happen, all in his lap, and then his thighs part and it spreads your knees wider and his fingers seat even deeper and you’re there, right there, the beginning of something really excellent. There’s a tinny splash—oh, oh god, that’s a pail catching all you have to give—which means Equius _thought ahead_ and actually _captchalogued a pail_ to keep things from getting too kinky, and you’re climaxing harder than you thought your body was capable of. You’re out of your mind with how brutally it hits you, pouring out everything you have, the thick sweep of Equius’s lips against the corner of your mouth.

Holy fuck, you never thought it could be that good.

And holy fuck, are you ever a selfish prick.

Equius’s fingers are drenched when he lets gravity slip them out of you. You’re sweatier than he is, sex-damp clinging to your skin. And this entire time, aside from your clumsy-ass kissing, you haven’t done a damn thing for him. You seal your mouth over his in apology. “Do you—can I—“

His entire face goes violently blue. “I was more than pleased with—that is to say, at this point I would rather—oh, fiddlesticks.” On the tops of your thighs, his hands clench into fists; you’re glad it wasn’t around your legs, because it feels like he might have pulverized your bones.

He’s shy. He was just shuffling around in your nook like he lost a caegar up there and he’s fucking shy now. You could kiss him. You _do_ kiss him. His awkwardness is endearing, and you know part of it is his enduring respect for you. He’s not ready for you to see him discomposed. “Hey,” you tell him gently, butting his forehead. “It’s okay. That was—holy shit, you wrung me out to dry.”

Slowly his hands unfurl. He strokes along your bare legs and keeps the cool swath of his forehead against yours. “You look amazing when you peak,” and even though every single word of that sentence is G-rated it’s possibly the filthiest thing he could have said.

“Don’t get me excited,” you grumble, planting your hands on his chest like you could shove him away. You’re pretty sure you won’t be getting a wriggly for another few days.

Equius loops his arms around your waist. For a good while the two of you simply breathe together. It’s terrifyingly intimate. Your body slowly comes down from its high, and your face stays spread in a doped-out smile. Eventually, after what feels like hours, Equius offers, “I could teach you the skip on Rainbow Road.”

“I’m too dumb to learn,” you tell him, climbing out of his lap for the first time in forever and searching for your jeans with your toes, “but if anyone can show me how to do it, it’s probably you.”

He’s so shy he even looks away while you pull your pants back on. “Here,” he says, handing your controller back to you once you’re decent. “I’ve queued up the race.”

He set your character as Mario. You might never stop smiling.


	5. Chapter 5

Equius came over to your place with kimchi around three in the afternoon. What you remember is ranting at him with your mouth full and spraying bits of fermented cabbage at his face in your passion over how bullshit Karnov is. What you _don’t_ remember is falling asleep afterwards on the couch while Equius watches YouTube videos through your Xbox 360. (At least he hasn’t broken any of your controllers. Yet.)

You wake up with a face full of cargo-short crotch. “Blurg,” you say intelligently.

A hand, cool and heavy, comes down to pat your head and settles there, possessive. “I would have exited,” Equius tells you, maneuvering around the Xbox Youtube menu with the bumper buttons, “but I did not wish to disturb you.”

“Good choice.” You’re still a little sleep-bleary, but you probably would have subconsciously snapped at him if he’d taken away his thigh. Which, wow. Thighs. Fucking meaty and perfectly muscular. Lay you down to rest on a concupiscent platform of Equius Zahhak’s thighs forever and ever. While your train of thought is on the concupiscent-platform track, you mock a stretch and use it as an excuse to get in a firm grope of fantastic glute. “Hey,” you attempt to say seductively. You’re sleepy and content and you wouldn’t mind wrasslin’ with him for a while. Or maybe just wrestling with his bulge. Yeah.

Equius’s spine stiffens immediately. “What, exactly, is your plan here?”

“Can’t a guy grab his matesprit’s ass every now and then without being questioned about his motives?” you lament. Your hand moves from his rear to his front, cupping at the fly of his shorts.

A rumble starts deep in Equius’s thoracic cavity. Not a purr. Something else, something that’s telling every primal instinct you have to fuck right the fuck off, adult in the block and about to cull you to death. Your hair stands on end and your horns prickle. “Vantas, you will stop this unseemly behavior,” he tells you in no uncertain terms.

You draw your hand away like you just got burned on your cooktop, although that doesn’t mean you can’t complain about the situation. “I don’t get it. It’s just somebody else’s hand instead of your own,  why do you have a shame stick so firmly up your waste chute about it?”

The rumble gets deeper. You are suddenly very afraid that your matesprit might actually crush your panframe in his hand. When you turn your head to look up at Equius’s face, though, you see it flushed a dark navy, like all his blood is right behind his cheeks. “Vantas,” he says again, and his one-handed grip on your controller stresses it so much it makes a cracking noise.

“What? What did I say?” Was it the shame stick up the waste chute thing? That was pretty kinky, maybe you shouldn’t have brought it up—you’ve only been flushed for a few perigees, after all, barely more than a season. Hell, you haven’t even properly pailed yet, just those makeout sessions that end in frustrated wet humping and occasionally Equius’s fingers crammed in your nook so good it feels like he’s swirling his claws around in your thinkpan.

All this time and the rumbling hasn’t stopped. It’s probably best if you get any body parts you value away from him at this point. Once you scramble to the other end of the couch, you can see the violent blush on Equius’s face extends all the way to the tips of his ears, even the curve of his shoulders. “I cannot believe you have the impropriety to even insinuate that I would do such a thing,” he growls.

That doesn’t help you pinpoint your blunder. “I don’t g—“

“To think that I would abuse myself in such a manner,” oh god, you recognize this, he’s going on one of his highblood-faluting rants all about how you’re gutter trash and he’s just on this side of royalty, “that I would even consider for a moment the thought of—of _self-pailing_ ,” he spits out like it’s poison, “and wasting my contribution to the Empire when every drop of any slurry I make belongs to the Drones, it is filthy and lewd and utterly depraved in every manner, it is simply unthinkable that a troll of my caste and status would stoop so low as to engage in such auto-erotic fumblings—“ His grip gets even stronger.

Your controller shatters. RIP in pieces. “Zahhak, oh my god,” you point out, glad it wasn’t your skull.

“I will not tolerate such impudent connotations from your speech, it is too scandalous to bear,” and yet you can see him shifting around in his seat a little.

Okay. Fine. You know what the problem is. You know what he’s going on about. And he’s currently working himself up into a froth so strong that it’s going to take an almighty shooshpapping to snap him out of it. “Zahhak,” you snap at him, and you don’t even have to try to put your leader tone on, it just _comes out_ when people are being difficult around you. He shuts his mouth so hard his teeth clack together, glaring at you like he could rip you apart with his eyes alone. “Do I need to get Captor in to shooshpap you?”

“This is not a pappable offense,” he insists, “I have every right to feel—“

“You do,” you tell him, “but you can do it without the fucking temper tantrum. Trust me. I know.”

“You know nothing,” he growls at you, “about the dignities of a cool-blooded caste.”

“I know enough to tell you that _that culture’s fucking dead_ ,” you spit at him, and that breaks him.

He lunges at you with both hands outstretched like he wants to put them around your throat. You catch his wrists before he makes it all the way there—your hands can’t circle around, not even close, but the claws on your thumb dig in sharp at his pulse point where he’s running frost-snap cold and that makes him pause on instinct. You push him back, and the muscles in his arms cord, forearm-tricep-bicep-deltoid, just like yours are doing now. The two of you stick to this equilibrium, neither of you moving a millimeter even as you’re straining into the muscles strapping your chest to hold him back.

Equius is frighteningly strong—and you are holding your own.

You stare him down, trying to light him on fire with the heat blazing behind your eyes, and he thaws, slow, almost reluctant, like the dim season fading into the twin vernal equinox with cold still clinging to the soil. His arms relax, thread-by-thread of his not-inconsiderable musculature, and you make headway, pushing into his personal space. His eyes are so deep they’re nearly black, pupa-ish wide as he tests your resolve.

His wrists twist. His fingers come up to slide into your palms. He holds your hands like this, almost cautious now that the rage came and went, heels of his hands against your radial arteries. Ice melting at an onslaught of heat. “Okay,” you say, your voice shaky after the adrenalin rush his aggression brought out in you. Holy fuck, you want to fight his strength all day. “Now that we—we got that out of our systems, we can sit down and talk about this like rational grown-ups.” Right?

Equius’s nostrils flare for a second. Then he dips his head, almost imperceptibly, and the tips of his ears fall. Acquiescence, as he would term it. “Did I hurt you?”

“Not too bad.” You think you might have some bone-deep bruising between your fingers at having to hold on to him so hard, but nothing’s throbbing too horribly. Maybe you didn’t do as badly as you thought.

“Forgive my outburst,” says Equius. “It was grublike and demeaning.”

“You can say that again,” you grouse. “Just tell me why you flipped an entire female barkbeast at me.”

“I… still find it difficult,” he says slowly, looking for the right words, “to overcome my hemocasteist inclinations, in the face of losing our planet in the trollocaust.”

“You’re a huge dumb,” you tell him affectionately. “Are you happy I’m alive?”

“Unbearably,” he admits, and uses his hands at your wrists to haul you into his lap. It’s a position both of you are comfortable with—face to face, bodies cradling each other. The terror of unbridled intimacy still hasn’t left it, and your pusher still goes a little sideways when he puts his arms around your waist, but. Your matesprit. Yours.

“There’s no more stupid bullshit.” You butt your forehead against his. You like doing this. It’s just plain nice. You’d be locking horns, if you had any real horns to speak of. “No more robots forcing us to fuck at gunpoint so some lady we’re never going to meet can bathe in vats of our jizz.”

“Did she really?” The look on Equius’s face is somewhere between disgusted and amused.

“I don’t fucking know. Nobody knows. We do the thing, we make the sauce, they take it away, and then suddenly grubs.” Troll reproduction sure is weird. Or, well, was. “My point. I had a point. I promise. My point is, trolls have been, you know. _Masturbating_ ,” and it sounds so weird you just want to giggle, “since we crawled out of the primordial genetic material mélange.”

“Even on Alternia?”

“Even on Alternia,” you reassure him.

“Even highbloods?”

You snort. “Ask Eridan sometime how many filters he wore out on his recuperacoon right after he hit his first molt.”

Scandalized is such a good look on Equius. “But I—I thought—I never—“

“Yeah, I got that from your rant,” you say wearily. “Seriously, though, _never_?” With that whole aphorism that still waters run deep, you figured he kept such a tight rein on himself only because he engaged in some quality stress relief every now and again.

“It never occurred to me.” He’s blushing cold again.

Suddenly things are starting to make sense. Why he tries to pull your bulge out every time. The way he plunges his fingers in you like he’s stuffing boonbucks up a flameflume. You thought he’d just known from the beginning that you like a little pain with your pleasure, like being pushed hard and fast to the limits of what your body can do. Nope, apparently he’s a phenomenal kisser but has never really known how to do anything else, just guessing from the incoherent feedback you manage to give him.

You pity him more than you thought physically possible; your thoracic cavity is far too small for your pumpbiscuit. You go to kiss him fondly on the strong hook of his nose, but he sees where you’re going and tips his head up for you. The press of his lips against yours is soft and strong all at once, so sweet you think your fangs might rot. How are you so flushed for this fucking idiot moron adorable hulk of awkward sweat oh god.

Eventually you remember to pull back, but you have to hide how hard you’re breathing. From just that. Yeah, it’s that good. “Okay, so. I’m going to put this as delicately as I can,” you tell him, “given that it’s, well. Me. And you. But. We’re…” This is actually hard, being nice about this and not just using the vulgar vernacular you’re used to. But Equius makes you want to be more genteel, and god damn it, you’re trying really fucking hard. “We’re matesprits, you’re my matesprit, and… well. Matesprits usually, um.” Fuck. “Mate. Right?”

“They do their duty to the Empire, yes,” Equius insists.

“You do realize,” you say, trying to keep your patience from running out entirely, “that we don’t have an Empire right now. And that trolls can mate in the off-season, too.”

Equius blusters. God, why do you always want to debauch him when he gets flustered. “I would rather—that is to say, the word sounds too crude for the activity, and if you could—“

“What would you rather call it, then?”

You didn’t know it was physically possible for him to turn this violently navy. “Getting flush.”

Your pusher flops around between your atmosphere aspirators like it’s a dying fish, and you physically have to hold onto Equius’s shoulders to keep from swooning. If he ever figures out just how much of a romantic you really are, you are so fucking sunk. “So… matesprits get flush.” Speaking of flushing, you’re coloring all across your face, heat reaching down your chest and all the way to the tips of your ears. The bases of your horns are even prickling. This has to be how the humans feel when they talk about ‘making love’ with the person they’re dating.

“After an extended courtship and mutual surrender.”

He’s talking like one of your romance novels and you just want to punch him in his nonconventionally handsome face with your lips over and over and over again. “Yeah, but. They don’t just jump feet-first into the gene pool, do they? There’s some toe-dipping to test the waters.” The sea metaphor will be a hit with him, you know, with his insistence on preserving at least some of the hemospectrum; his reverence for seadwellers might help you win him over on this point.

Equius starts chewing on his lip instead. It just makes you want to bite it for him. “Are you suggesting that we, as matesprits, should be testing these waters?”

“Well, no offense, but…” How do you _not_ put this crudely? You want to do things to this troll that can’t be described except through expletives and innuendo. Some of them might not even be legal. “You’re my matesprit and I kinda want to touch you in the no-nos at some point. Like now. Now is a good time.”

In response, Equius passes the back of his hand across his forehead. Sweating. At just the idea of you touching him. God, you want him to fall apart in your hands. “You… want to?”

“Yes!” You’re not sure how much clearer you can make it.

“I.” For a moment, Equius can’t meet your eyes. Then he looks at you head-on, that steely gaze that means he’s resolved. “I do have several reservations, the foremost being that I might hurt you.”

“Did you hurt me before?” You don’t let him answer—it’s a rhetorical question. “No. You didn’t. Because I can handle it. Just because I’m small doesn’t mean I’m weak.” You just pack more strength into a shorter frame, that’s all. Of course, you might be underestimating his bulge if he thinks it might break your arm, but you’re just thrilled that this conversation is actually going somewhere.

“I also—not having done this, I’m rather—“

He’s nervous. Nervous and shy and altogether _Equius_ , and because you want to kiss him for it you go ahead and peck him right on the mouth. “You don’t have to,” you remind him. “I mean, I’m just… saying what I want. And if that’s not what you want that’s fine, I don’t want to push you or anything…” Oh, fuck, are you pushing him? Your self-doubt takes this opportunity to roundhouse-kick you right in the chest.

Equius brings up a (sort of sweaty but not completely drenched) palm to cradle your cheek. The cool of his skin sears against the heat in your face. “You _are_ my matesprit.” He says it like he has to convince himself, but as he keeps rolling he gathers steam. Or, well, sweat. It’s nowhere near as bad as it would have been when he was six sweeps old, but it’s noticeable. Pitiable. “You are certainly entitled to want these things from me—“

“If it’s not what you want then it’s not what I want.” This isn’t about entitlement, even though yeah, this is kind of a thing matesprits do, after all, make each other spill.

Equius’s hand slips down so he can put a finger at your mouth. You shut up immediately; the sensitive caress at your lips has you wibbly in the nook. “I trust you, Karkat.” It’s like he reached up into your chest to squeeze your pusher in his fist. Trust, maybe even more intimate than pity—followed with your name framed by his tongue. You are so unbelievably flushed for this troll. “And I am undeniably curious as to—well.”

“Hey.” You nuzzle your nose against his. “Queue up YouTube again.” He can use your controller—he can’t possibly break two in one day. While he closes his arms around you to reach, you start leaving a line of kisses along his jawline; under your lips his pulse races. By the time a video starts playing, he gets impatient enough that he makes the move first, sweeping you into a bruising sweet kiss.

This is the part he’s good at. You let him carry you away for a few moments. If you can make him feel even a fraction of the reactions he gives you, then you’re going to be giving him one hell of a time. Just when things start getting heated and molten, though, you reluctantly pull away, smearing your mouth along the prominent rise of his cheekbone, the corner of his jaw. There’s a solid lump gathering under the part of your thighs.

It’s a start.

You’re reluctant to shoosh him, even though his body language is tense as all fuck. “Relax,” you say instead, and go for the button of his shorts. The lump under you writhes. The more nervous he gets, the more nervous you get, and you want to feel like you have at least nominal control over the situation. “Okay?”

“Yes,” comes out a little strained.

The zip comes undone next. Your fingers are only shaking a little. What greets you is… hm. Boxer briefs, sure, but something else, both utilitarian and strappy. When you follow a strap, you hit the top of a striped stocking. What you want to do right now is bodily rip off his shorts with your claws so you can see the interplay between blue-flushed gray and clean black lines. And maybe bite at the gap between stockings and briefs.

Later. Now is when you put the pressure of your palm, gentle but firm, against the lump in those boxer briefs. “A-ah,” you hear from above you, a soft vowel sound that cracks in the middle. You want to make him fucking _sing_. The solid mass you feel under you is cold and pulsing—apparently highbloods just get colder just like lowbloods heat up? That’s your theory, anyway.

Time to take the plunge. You swallow around what feels like a rock and peel down the elastic of Equius’s boxers.

It’s like when Troll John Travolta in _In Which A Mobster’s Matesprit_ … opened that briefcase. Holy fucking shit, heaven is staring you in the face. It’s _huge_. Easily the size of your forearm, maybe even creeping up to the heel of your hand. And it doesn’t entirely taper like yours into a point, just ends in a blunt sort of tip, broad even at the start. You are simultaneously terrified and exhilarated. That entire thing is probably going to end up your nook at some point.

Might as well feel it out and see what you’re up against. You grab at the base and your fingers won’t meet when they go around. You’re huffing out incredulous breaths and you’re not even the one getting his bulge wanked. Above you, Equius isn’t quite watching the television any more, though he’s trying, head tilted against the back of the couch and the point of his good horn digging into the wall as his half-lidded eyes glaze over further. Breathing harder than you, chest jostling against yours. Completely enthralled.

His material is already coating your fingers. You slick your grip all the way up and a heavy pulse runs through the bulge from base to tip. Moving back down, fingers as tight as they’ll go, and the pulse turns into a quiver, like it wants to move but it’s not sure where.

Time to tease. You don’t want to seem mean, but if this is Equius’s first time getting one rubbed out for him you’re going to try to make it last. He seems a little short on patience as it is. You twine the broad tip between your fingers, spooling the end of his bulge around the breadth of your hand, and it moves with you, gladly clinging to any contact.

This might be a two-hander. You kind of want to put the tip in your mouth while your hands work on the rest, but that might be too much for Equius right now—and he only really said you could touch, not blow. You’re not going to push that line. You can get your other hand into it, though. While you roll your wrist to encourage the tip to move across your one hand, the other goes down to the base, starts broad up-down strokes but at different angles each time.

A rumble starts up in Equius’s chest, a very different rumble than the one he gave you only a few minutes ago. This one is the prelude to a chitter, an unmistakable sign that he’s turned on. Because of what you’re doing. You feel incredibly powerful, pulse pounding with it so hard you can feel it in the tip of your tongue. He’s not even pretending to pay attention to anything else, eyes closed, fists clenched at his sides. You almost wish he’d touch you, but you might actually explode if he does that.

Instead, you focus on wrestling with his bulge. The more engrossed he gets, the more unruly his bulge becomes, until it’s all you can do to pin it down and force it to where you want it to go. The powerful thrash of it—god, you’re so wet right now, bulge out like it wants to try and compete in a weird sort of arm-wrestling contest with this behemoth. “Ka—ah, _ah_ ,” comes harsh and breathless.

On your next downstroke, you pass a little further back. Fuck, you didn’t realize he was _this_ into it—his shame globes are nearly hard, certainly swollen, and he’s primed to spill. You lean forward, swipe your mouth up the bared column of Equius’s throat, add a hint of teeth, and he actually starts to choke. “Close?” you barely dare to ask.

“Ah, ah, _ah_ ,” comes out on every exhale now. God, he might not even know whether he’s close or not, if he’s never done this then you’re giving him his first orgasm of all time— _no pressure or anything_.

Instead of locking down, you go into overdrive. Roll your wrist more insistently. More pressure from your other hand. And with your lips at his adam’s apple you give him the sweetest kiss, followed swiftly by a bite to the tender spot just at the side. And sucking pressure—his first hickey, maybe. You could get used to feeling this masterful, this in control.

Equius lets out a groan layered over a growl, something primal and feral that has your hackles raised and your heart hammering. His hands fumble, clattering through his sylladex, assorted detritus raining out of it to clutter up the couch, until he finds what he’s looking for—that same pail you’ve spilled in. “Ka-ah-rrrrrrrr-ka— _ahhhhh_ ,” comes out disjointed, half-breath and half-purr, but that’s your name, he’s saying your name, and he’s scooting his hips towards the edge of the couch cushion and his shorts are falling down to drape around his knees—

You think he might actually start crying at the sound it makes when his material hits the pail. He looks devastated: eyes blissful shut, mouth soft trembling half-open, long hair fanned over his shoulders, beautiful cool blue rising to color his skin, and his hands come up to clench at your thighs as sensation wrecks him. You are going to purposefully aggravate each and every one of those bruises later, just to burn this moment into your memory. You want to wear it around like some kind of trophy. You just made Equius spill for probably his first time and you have never reveled in your authority quite so much as now.

Shock after shock shudders through him, and by the end he’s shaking. You awkwardly wipe your hands on your jeans, then bring them up to cradle his face. He leans towards you, kisses you enthusiastically if a bit sloppily, and pulls you closer to him, even though his bulge is still sort of out as it starts to get shy and crawl back into its sheath.

If he kisses you any harder you’re at serious risk of dropping a load in your pants. Reluctantly you pull back, surveying his face for any signs of irreparable psychological damage. No, still looks fine for the most part. “I—that—I mean—Vantas—“

“Don’t you dare try to thank me,” you order him. He snaps his mouth shut so forcefully you can hear his teeth clack. “But, I mean. Was that…” You leave it dangling so he’ll know it’s a question.

“Beyond anything I would have dreamed from my matesprit.” Your small grinchy pusher grows three sizes immediately and threatens to break your ribs. “Could I—that is, would you allow me to—“ His hands creep up your thighs.

You would, but you shouldn’t. “No,” you say softly, “I’m okay, this was for you.” Which is true. And also maybe you don’t want him to know how you’re dripping profusely in your pants just from his reactions. From the thought that you orchestrated this. He submitted to you and you led him here and this might be an actual kink that you have because holy shit you should not be this ready to spill just from jacking off your matesprit.

“Because if you would like—“

“Oh, trust me, I would very much fucking _like_ ,” you don’t hesitate to let him know, “but I won’t, because I’m busy.”

“Doing what?”

You kiss him until he’s smiling and breathless again, helping him pull up his boxers and zip up his shorts once his bulge retracts. The squish in your jeans is annoying and uncomfortable, yeah, but the Mother Grub gave you two hands for a reason: one for your bulge and one for your nook. You’ll take care of it later. What’s important right now is that your matesprit is thirty synonyms of wonderful and you want to tell him so in every way you know how.

Yes, including letting him win at Mortal Kombat.


End file.
